WATERVILLE — Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell said Tuesday that President Trump’s decision to withdraw the country from the Paris climate agreement is a historic mistake that will allow another major nation such as China to become dominant in innovating the growing field of clean energy.

“That’s a role the U.S. ought to be playing,” Mitchell said.

Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell speaks during a Mid-Maine Chamber of Commerce Leadership luncheon Tuesday in Waterville. Staff photo by David Leaming

Mitchell, a Waterville native well known for his roles in peace negotiations in Northern Ireland and the Middle East, made the comments while speaking to the Mid-Maine Chamber’s Leadership Luncheon, where he addressed what he saw as the important economic issues facing the United States.

When asked about the U.S. Senate pushing for a vote on a yet-to-be revealed version of a Republican health care bill, Mitchell said the process the Senate was following by working in secret was “wrong and inappropriate.”

He said the process should be open and transparent, but the Senate was nearing a vote on a bill many members hadn’t read and the public had not seen.

“Doing it behind closed doors is inappropriate,” he said.

Mitchell also said he believes it is inevitable that the United States eventually will move to a universal health care system. He said it probably wouldn’t happen anytime soon based on politics, but he felt there was movement in that direction.

“I think it will happen and I think it will be a beneficial thing for most Americans,” Mitchell said.

He said countries all over the world have interest in what the United States does. Mitchell said the fastest-growing area in job creation involves the field of clean energy, making Trump’s shunning of the climate agreement dealing with greenhouse gas emissions more unwise.

“We should devote our efforts to growth energies of the future,” Mitchell said. “One of them, I believe, is in clean energy. It is without a doubt and beyond rational dispute that in the course of this century, the world will transition away from a carbon-based economy.”

On these and other issues, Mitchell said he still thinks the United States is poised to maintain its role as a world leader.

“We have faced many more serious challenges in the past and we’ve overcome them,” he said. He added that despite its imperfections, the U.S. “remains the most free, most just and most open society not only in the world but in the history of the world. I disagree with people who said the U.S. is a country in decline.”

Mitchell pointed to past moments of major transition in history, including the Industrial Revolution, which was marked by unrest, widespread violence and misery but also by the greatest increase in human productivity, creating new jobs, goods and services. Once the Industrial Revolution spread to the United States, he said, the country sped to the forefront.

He said the revolution through which the world is passing now will be viewed by historians as significant a turning point as the Industrial Revolution.

Mitchell pointed to the smartphone as a signal of the change of pace in technology. He said technology is neutral, equally able to be used for good purposes as for destructive reasons.

Technological changes, combined with global trade, have led to “the creation of more wealth than ever before,” Mitchell said. “That has benefited a few but has not been distributed widely.”

. Through globalization and trade agreements, jobs undoubtedly have been lost, but Mitchell said future agreements must be strengthened, as the “vast majority of job losses in our country and around the world” result from innovation.

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